A repair shop usually measures growth by adding locations, benches, and staff until the founder spends less time on difficult machines and more time managing the expanding service network itself.
Iaroslav Tugai expanded his scooter repair business across Valencia before reducing its physical footprint and moving much of the operation online after what he calls a failed attempt to expand.
That shift followed failure. Tugai says failure forced maximum cost reduction and an online shift.
Public sources show the network at its largest and the business in its current form, but they do not document the chronology or sequence of the individual closures in detail.
Demand arrived before the profession
Tugai began working with electric scooters in 2017, when owners were already searching for repairs that ordinary bicycle shops in Valencia could not yet provide through their usual services.
His work had begun with bicycles rather than electric scooters. During that first summer, scooter owners brought him unfamiliar machines. He says learning those repairs required months of concentrated experimentation.
No settled trade awaited him. Customers in Valencia presented the problem first, while the knowledge needed to solve it had to be developed through repeated work at the repair bench because no established method existed.
Electric scooters eventually took over, and the specialty widened beyond replacing broken parts, since Tugai began producing lithium ion batteries and additional packs that could extend a machine’s range.
Routine intake and familiar replacements can be organized across multiple locations, but damaged battery systems require diagnostic experience that cannot be copied into a manual or checklist.
A workshop can add service counters much faster than it can reproduce the diagnostic experience required when an unfamiliar battery arrives with an unfamiliar fault during the workshop’s daily operation.
The network and the bench
By autumn 2023, the network’s scale entered the public record. When Las Provincias profiled Tugai that autumn, A-Fix operated 8 workshops across Valencia, placing the once unusual service within reach of customers in several parts of the city.
Repeated repairs across those locations exposed technicians to many variations of apparently similar faults, creating a body of practical cases from the expanding Valencia network during documented growth.
Tugai reported roughly 50000 repairs to the newspaper over 6 years.
The figure came from Tugai. It was not independently audited, but it indicates the volume of cases behind the repair experience Tugai described when Las Provincias interviewed him for its 2023 profile.
An earlier article offers another measure of scale: Valencia Secreta reported that A-Fix had handled 8000 machines during its first 3 years of operation in Valencia.
Tugai was not named. The article connects to his story through the shared A-Fix brand and matching Valencia streets, so it supports the business history without identifying the owner directly.
Volume did not ensure sustainability. A chain can standardize customer intake and common repairs across several locations, but unusual faults still concentrate its most difficult diagnostic work among a smaller group of experienced technicians.
Tugai says failure led to cost cuts and more online business.
The closure dates remain unknown. Neither the supplied account nor public sources establish how many workshops closed at each stage, the sequence of those closures, or when individual Valencia addresses stopped operating within the network.
The large network operated as A-Fix in Valencia, while the current AF Scooters website lists operations in Castellón de la Plana and Burriana rather than the former citywide network.
What contraction preserved
The smaller footprint shows contraction and change after failed expansion.
He says the failure pushed the business to reduce costs as far as possible and move more activity online, while retaining workshop functions that still required physical repair work.
Battery rebuilding remained local because it required physical diagnosis and component work on the machine, rather than another storefront, an online exchange, or immediate replacement of the battery.
The reduction separated online functions from physical battery repair work.
By July 2026, Tugai reported more than 90000 scooter repairs.
The figure remains externally unverified. Current public addresses independently show a physical operation much smaller than the Valencia network, even though Tugai’s reported cumulative count continued to rise after the Valencia network contracted.
The reduced footprint and rising cumulative repair count show that reported volume and the number of physical premises no longer moved together as they had during the Valencia expansion.
One practice under 2 names
The name also changed. Reporting from Valencia called the business A-Fix, whereas Tugai’s current website presents the operation as AF Scooters in Castellón and connects the current name directly to him.
No source gives a reason. Any motive for that change would exceed the available record.
Earlier coverage links Tugai to A-Fix, its repair network, and battery production, while the present website links him directly to AF Scooters.
Battery production and repair continued under the current business name.
A stricter road ahead
Regulation adds another constraint for this repair business in Spain. From 2027, uncertified personal mobility vehicles cannot use public roads.
Personal mobility vehicles released onto the market from 22 January 2024 must already carry a VMP certificate under the same DGT framework that governs their lawful public use.
Spain has also launched its Registry of Light Personal Vehicles, which issues a certificate after registration and requires owners to present that document when arranging compulsory insurance for the vehicle.
Certification governs road legality. It does not prove anything about Tugai’s revenue or validate every modification, but it connects repair, alteration, documentation, and lawful road use within the same practical decision.
Tugai draws another boundary by opposing gatherings that put riders of powerful scooters onto public streets, arguing that they endanger other people and create pressure for stricter regulation.
He separates technical possibility from acceptable use on public roads.
The shape left after growth
Deliberate smallness was not Tugai’s plan for the repair business. He pursued scale, found that the attempt failed, and then reorganized the operation around the functions that remained viable after the physical network contracted and the former Valencia premises disappeared.
The failed growth exposed a practical division between routine service, online commerce, and complex repair work that still depends on concentrated experience inside a physical workshop.
The reported repair volume continued to rise even after the business no longer maintained its network of Valencia addresses and instead listed operations in Castellón de la Plana and Burriana.
The current business retains its earlier repair and battery work.
For this business, physical expansion and accumulated repair volume did not move together, because customer access, online commerce, and difficult workshop repairs scaled in different ways over time.
Sources and statuses
- 1Las Provincias profile by Lola Soriano PonsVerified
- 2Las Provincias profile by Lola Soriano PonsVerified
- 3Las Provincias interview with Iaroslav TugaiVerified
- 5Iaroslav Tugai’s answers to the editorsSubject-supplied
- 4Valencia Secreta report on A-FixVerified
- 6Directorate General for Traffic guidance on personal mobility vehiclesVerified
- Directorate General for Traffic announcement launching the light personal vehicle registryVerified